Zika warning to Britons trying for a baby
Spread of Zika disease leaves mothers with moral dilemmas amid fears of its effect on unborn babies
BRITISH couples have been advised to stop trying for a baby for up to six months if a partner has returned from one of 23 countries affected by the Zika virus.
Public Health England (PHE) said all men should use condoms for at least 28 days after coming home from countries such as Brazil and Mexico if their partner was at risk of pregnancy, or already pregnant.
Men who had suffered an unexplained fever while travelling, or who had been diagnosed with the virus, should avoid unprotected sex, or trying for a child for six months. Women have already been advised to avoid travelling to infected countries if they might be pregnant or are trying for a child.
Around half a million people are believed to have travelled to Zika-infected countries in the past six months, according to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics.
The virus has already caused nearly 4,000 cases of malformed babies in the Americas and the World Health Organisation warned yesterday that the disease was spreading so quickly that four million people could be infected by the end of the year.
Although the disease is mainly transmitted through mosquitoes, PHE said sexual transmission had been recorded in a “limited number of cases”.
PHE advised that if a female partner was at risk of getting pregnant, or was already pregnant, a male partner with no symptoms of the disease should use condoms for 28 days after his return from a Zika transmission area, and for six months if infection was confirmed.
When Emilly Sofia was still in the womb, an ultrasound scan revealed the abnormality. The unborn child was destined to be among thousands of Brazilian babies born with unusually small heads.
Her mother, Girlania, 29, is philosophical about her daughter’s fate. “Just to know she was alive and OK was the greatest happiness in the world and I have faith that she is going to have everything she needs,” she said. “It’s God’s will: he wanted us to have a baby like this.”
More than 4,000 cases of suspected microcephaly have been recorded in Brazil since November – almost 30 times more than in 2014. About a third were in one state: Pernambuco in the North East.
The local capital, Recife, now finds itself at the centre of the struggle against a condition which is believed to be caused by the Zika virus.
The crisis has caused moral and ethical dilemmas for the city’s women. At least one mother has given up her daughter to a shelter because the child had microcephaly.
Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but doctors believe women may be trying to end their pregnancies if they suspect they have contracted the Zika virus, which is spread by mosquitoes.
“Those who can afford to will be able to find a clinic. Those who don’t may run the risk of submitting to an alternative intervention that could put the woman at risk of infection or even death,” said Dr Maria Luiza Bezerra Menezes, the president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Pernambuco state.
“There’s a sadness, a worry among the women whose children have been diagnosed with microcephaly. Our health system is not totally prepared for this.”
Brazil’s doctors have not yet established whether the sudden increase in the number of babies with impaired brain development is definitively linked to the Zika virus.
Vanessa van der Linden, one of the few paediatric neurologists in Recife, was the first to suggest such a link. But doctors are still baffled.
“The literature doesn’t support any link between Zika and microcephaly,” said Dr Angela Rocha, a paediatric infectologist in Recife. “But we haven’t had microcephaly in this proportion before: it’s unprecedented.”
For now, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has confined itself to voicing “strong suspicions” about a link with Zika, while announcing that the virus is “spreading explosively”. Infections have now been recorded in 23 countries, including Britain, which has had five cases.
The heads of babies with microcephaly measure less than 12.6in (32cm), compared with an average of between 13.4in (34cm) and 14.5in (37cm). The development of the child’s brain is restricted.
Dr Adriana Scavuzzi, the women’s health coordinator at IMIP hospital in Recife, warned that the potential consequences of a link with Zika could be even greater than the Thalidomide scandal, which affected a generation of children.
“The outbreak from Thalidomide also caused a generation with deformities – it’s just that in the case of Thalidomide, it was identified and the substance was taken from the market,” said Dr Scavuzzi.
But the mosquitoes that spread Zika cannot be eliminated from Brazil or anywhere else.
On Monday, the WHO will hold an emergency committee to decide whether the crisis amounts to a public health emergency of global concern.
In Brazil, the spread of the virus has taken the country entirely by surprise. Brazil – which is also suffering an economic recession – was already dealing with record levels of dengue fever when Zika was first spotted last year. Rio di Janeiro is to host the Olympics in August.
The army has been mobilised to try to protect the public from mosquitoes. Soldiers have been going door-to-door to offer advice to those living with Brazil’s poor sanitary conditions on how to stop mosquitoes breeding in their homes.
Researchers are trying to discover whether Zika is spreading so rapidly because it can now be transmitted by the common mosquito as well as the tropical variety, Aedes aegypti, already known to be a carrier.
“If this is confirmed, the problem will double,” said Dr Constancia Ayres, the lead researcher into Zika-carrying mosquitoes at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Recife.
“Instead of fighting just one species, we will have to fight two.”
‘There’s a sadness among the women whose children have been diagnosed with microcephaly’